LONDON, April 1 (Reuters) – The April Fool is dead. Or at
least the gentle jester of the common folk has been converted
into a corporate colossus controlled by global marketing
executives.

Companies around the world, from Google to BMW and Sony,
have adopted the tradition of goading the gullible on April 1 to
show their lighter sides and steal some free publicity.

LONDON, April 1 (Reuters) – The April Fool is dead.

Or at least the gentle jester of the common folk has
metastised into a corporate colossus controlled by global
marketing executives, bestriding the Internet to force familiar
brands ever deeper into the collective consciousness.

So while Google extended a tradition dating back, well, a
decade or so, in poking fun at its own ubiquity – introducing a
database of smells and shutting down its YouTube service – it
was fitting that old-fashioned, paper-based media poked fun on
Monday at the power of machines over our minds.

LONDON, March 14 (Reuters) – When a new man takes over the
leadership of more than a billion people, it’s hardly surprising
it was big news on Thursday. But, hold the front page – this
isn’t Pope Francis.

As in some other places where the Roman Catholic Church
carries little weight, 1.3 billion Chinese paid scant attention
to the Vatican; media in China focused rather on Communist party
chief Xi Jinping’s confirmation as head of state in Beijing.

LONDON (Reuters) – Pope Benedict XVI gazed out on the crowd packing the piazza of a small Italian town. Below him lay the bones of Celestine V, the last pontiff to choose to retire; above rose sunlit crags where the “hermit pope” took refuge from a troubled mediaeval world.

A few weeks after that visit in July 2010 to Sulmona, in the Abruzzo mountains, the then 83-year-old Benedict told a fellow German he would not hesitate to become the first pope since Celestine in 1294 to resign of his own free will, if he was no longer able – “physically, psychologically and spiritually” – to meet the demands of running the billion-strong Catholic Church.

LONDON/ALGIERS (Reuters) – The In Amenas gas plant felt impregnable to many who worked there – walled in, hundreds of miles from anywhere and with the Algerian army constantly patrolling its desert approaches.

That was a mirage. Libya, an ex-police state turned arms bazaar and now open for jihad, lies just 50 empty miles away. And in any case, the enemy was probably already inside the gates.

LONDON/ALGIERS (Reuters) – The In Amenas gas plant felt impregnable to many who worked there – walled in, hundreds of miles from anywhere and with the Algerian army constantly patrolling its desert approaches.

That was a mirage. Libya, an ex-police state turned arms bazaar and now open for jihad, lies just 50 empty miles away. And in any case, the enemy was probably already inside the gates.

LONDON/ALGIERS, Jan 18 (Reuters) – The In Amenas gas plant
felt impregnable to many who worked there – walled in, hundreds
of miles from anywhere and with the Algerian army constantly
patrolling its desert approaches.

That was a mirage. Libya, an ex-police state turned arms
bazaar and now open for jihad, lies just 50 empty miles away.
And in any case, the enemy was probably already inside the
gates.